Systems composed of two types of nonidentical and dependent components

A coherent system of order n that consists two different types of dependent components is considered. The lifetimes of the components in each group are assumed to follow an exchangeable joint distribution, and the two random vectors, which represent the lifetimes of the components in each group are also assumed to be dependent. Under this particular form of dependence, all components are assumed to be dependent but they are categorized with respect to their reliability functions. Mixture representation is obtained for the survival function of the system's lifetime. Mixture representations are also obtained for the series and parallel systems consisting of disjoint modules such that all components of Type I are involved in one module (subsystem) and all components of Type II are placed in the other module. The theoretical results are illustrated with examples. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 388–394, 2015